


Midnight Runs & Capture Cards

by Pipsqueak (Skyhonni)



Series: Not Much (But They’re Trying) [4]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: As in plural, Banter, F/M, Mentions of Covid, Sans is like yo let's go on an adventure lmao and ur like sure dude, Streaming, and also a college student, as in he fucking hates it., bc masks are great for characters who are suddenly famous, eh what's the difference, go straight to the source I always say, in best buy and at your house apparently, mentions of streaming, midnight shenanigans, rating change is inevitable, sans has a thing about having money spent on him, sans is a nerd, sans sniffs you and you allow it bc both of you are depraved, set six months after Rumors & GoPros, soda can projectiles, the library is shut down :(, where is this man gonna get his daily dose of Hair Sniffing TM?, you’re a youtuber, you’re both stupid horny dumbasses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27652867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyhonni/pseuds/Pipsqueak
Summary: Sans has these long-running bits that include good-natured ribbing, harmless time wasting monologues and at least three scene changes that drive everyone crazy.Everyone except you. For some fucking reason that he can’t seriously conceive and doesn’t bother to try, you go along with them.•°•°•°•“hey, if anyone asks what my mouth do, now you know.”You quirk your lips. “Is that all I’m allowed to say?”His cheeks tint just a little more blue. Adorable. He’ll fuck you up in a Popeye’s bathroom as you wait for chicken strips but his cheeks heat from a mild case of innuendo. “for legal reasons I might have to issue a gag order if you say much else.”
Relationships: Sans (Undertale)/Reader
Series: Not Much (But They’re Trying) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923259
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	Midnight Runs & Capture Cards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok I'm done editing it like a fucking weirdo. Who the hell edits so god damn much after posting it for the public to see? This bitch. Jesus. Well, anyway, have this, I guess.

You lean back in your streaming chair, rubbing your eyebrow tiredly as you hit a few shortcuts on your keyboard with your free hand.

The clock ticks on your wall. The hum of your editing computer’s fan is a quiet white noise drifting up from the desk shelf you’d crammed it into a year ago and promised yourself to move to a more appropriate shelf. (It got stuck between the bottom and top so you didn’t. It’s sort of a permanent fixture of your desk until it dies).

Your breathing is a steady in-n-out. A lofi livestream murmurs gently through your stupidly expensive speakers. The clicking of your mouse and the random play-pause of the video you’re editing is the only irregular sound, and even that tends to have patterns as you splice and delete and add and splice and delete and add—

You’re going into what you’ve dubbed the _editing haze_ , doing things and shit while thinking no thoughts whatsoever. Your hands know what’s up, the keyboard familiar; your eyes and ears are processing what it’s seeing and hearing in the background, and you have all the time in the world to float on by in the recess of your subconscious like a chill anti-reality party of one.

It’s whatever. Kinda boring after the first ten minutes.

The only drawback you’ve found is that it always leaves you feeling vaguely uncomfortable once you’ve snapped out of it, not unlike waking up and finding that you’ve drooled on a pillow. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s so mindless; sometimes you don’t even know what you’re doing until you’ve already done it.

You sip your ginger beer and shift in the chair a little. Yawn. Edit a bit of text to emphasize what you’re saying in the video. It’ll be funny when you’re not so fucking tired of staring at Premier. Your eyes drift down to the time without your permission, and you’re forced to acknowledge the timeframe of your editing crimes.

Four hours. Yikes.

In the middle of the outro, you’d planned some edits beforehand and filmed for them. Now you’re hating yourself for being an ambitious person with creative ideas. Who thought animation and photoshopped meme jokes was a good idea? Past you was an asshole and you want to fire her.

You lean closer to the screen in mindless concentration as you zoom in, erasing your own face to slap the Free Real Estate guy’s underneath.

The sound of Discord’s ring cutting through your music startles you enough that you literally keyboard smash in the middle of testing the edit, and you end up adding several frames of a saved _We’ll Be Right Back_ asset on accident. This one has a still from Sans Deploying the Boy during the second cookie episode. Papyrus looks so deeply offended that it makes the huge fire in front of him even funnier.

You press the accept call hotkey without really seeing who’s calling, since overlay isn’t on and you’re too lazy to exit Premier’s fullscreen. You open your mouth to say _hey_ , only for your caller to beat you to the punch.

“wuzzup pretty lady? wanna take a midnight run to best buy with a skinless, single, heavyset, middle aged man?”

Sans’ deep rumble of a voice snaps you out of your editing haze and, back in reality, you blink a few times. Then your face pinches up. 

“You’re _fluffy_ and I like your squish,” you say defensively back, outraged on his behalf even though he’s stated many times it’s a joke he can handle. “But it _is_ a little confusing. Aren’t you supposed to be all boney?”

He snorts. The sound blows out his mic a little. His phone might be top of the line but he treats it like a dirty dollar store baseball; the amount of times you’ve extracted the thing from Fluffy’s maw in the past six months has probably already hit the triple digits.

“whatever. is that a no?” he asks, tone mocking up the hurt. “you’re not even _working_ tomorrow.”

“And how do you know that, huh?” you ask, leaning in your chair and bouncing it back a few times, swinging side-to-side. You save and minimize Premier, so you can pull up directions to the nearest Best Buy. It’s been a hot second since you’ve made a physical trip to any sort of tech store, too captivated by the wonders of home delivery and confined by stage two lockdown.

His tone is matter-of-fact when he says, “well you see here, i’m a stalker.”

It’s your time to snort. “Bold. Just going right out and announcing it. Should I call the police? Where exactly are you right now, just wondering for totally _non-_ nine-one-one reasons?”

“ _hey now_. i’m a certified stalker. got the papers to prove it.” he says, the sound of him shifting in his shitty bed creaking through the speakers. “and i’m in your bushes right now.”

You glance down at your lap, studying your Cheeto-stained sweats. “I don’t have anything up in my cootch right now, dude.”

His burst of laughter makes you grin. “you’re gonna put me outta business, snickers.”

“Is stalking a lucrative endeavor?” you wonder.

“oh yeah. big money. stole it right outta your duct tape wallet. y’know, when i broke into your house.”

“Who am I kidding, of course stalking pays big money,” you say, narrowing down your search to a few stores that are farther away from your house. (The unfortunate reality of suddenly being recognizable in public; you have to be careful. The use of masks helps though. Not that the _reason_ you have to wear them is much of a plus.) You pause, then say, “the stock market is through the roof.”

The sound of him laughing is slightly marred by Sans smacking the phone with his hand, as he tends to do when you make a pun that he didn’t think of. “hey! that’s my brand! i’m suing.”

“Wait a minute. _You’re_ suing _me_? Aren’t you the one doing something illegal?”

“it’s fuckin’ opposite day or somethin’,” he halfasses, and this time you smack your own mic.

“uh... but seriously. do you wanna...?” he’s a little unsure underneath the humor. You always try to squish his bouts of insecurity with enthusiastic participation, because taking it seriously would probably make him self-conscious. He’d be fun to watch fucking paint dry with. The fondest memory you have with him that doesn’t involve his built-in pussy destroyer is a simple trip to the corner store.

Except it wasn’t simple and you’re both sort of banned from all Shell Stations now.

“Yeah, sure. Can you ’port over so I can drive?”

He groans. “why can’t i just—”

“Nope.”

“but it takes so loooongg—”

“Out of the two of us, who has a stomach?” you prompt. “Unless you’re holding out on me, in which case can I have your word that you will never show it to me? I feel like that might be worth the title _nightmare fuel._ ”

Instead of answering he groans again and hangs up right as you can hear his continued groaning suddenly drifting from the living room down the hallway to the crack in the office door.

“I’m sorry I didn’t know someone was a BIG BABY,” you yell out, reopening Premier. He just groans louder. 

You know he’ll either fall asleep on your couch or come looking for you if you don’t come stumbling out of your office right away, so you go back to editing. Gotta make him work for it.

Sure enough, a few minutes later he crashes open the door, and when you glance up at him from your slouched position—unimpressed—he leans against the doorframe and tugs at the top seam of a bag of popcorn in a dramatic fashion. (Pinkies up; gotta be fancy.)

Steam hits his face and he squints through it, apparently determined not to let it mess up his entrance. He must’ve ’ported back and made it back at his mansion of a house; it’s not even a brand you buy because he’s got an aversion to brand names when a generic is on the shelf and you didn’t hear the battleground popping coming from your kitchen.

“hey,” he says, a baritone impression of Miles Morale’s classic line. You crack a smile and try to cover it up by looking back to your work. Can’t take this bastard seriously.

“Hey. So what’s at Best Buy that you need so desperately at uhhh....” you check the clock on your desk, “eleven pm?”

“hold on.”

He shoves his hand in the bag and starts rustling around in there like he’s got a specific kernel in mind. You stop your text editing for a second in favor of covering the part of your face he can see with your hand so he won’t get the satisfaction of glimpsing your face. This game of hide-your-reaction started a few weeks back when he made a sappy comment about your smile. He started doing it right back near immediately, hamming it up, and now it’s become a sort of inside joke.

He makes an _Ah-Ha!_ noise and then pulls out the biggest wad of popcorn he could manage. Then he shoves it right in his face like a gremlin.

“wanna get a capture card,” he says, through a mouthful of popcorn. Asshole.

You hum in acknowledgement. “Is Paps’s still fucked up?”

“uh.” he pauses. It seems genuine, and kind of halting, so you turn to him and raise your eyebrows. He looks a little sheepish when he admits, “no. he replaced it a few days ago. ’m not getting it for him.”

You slightly swival around then, a little confused. “Oh?”

“i was thinking of—heh. well.” his cheekbones dust with blue, embarrassed. “streaming.” your eyebrows crawl impossibly higher and he averts his eyelights to examine your wall decor. “maybe? without my face,” he adds the last bit quickly.

“Huh.” You sit back and regard him for a minute.

Sans’s aversion to the camera has never been a point of contention between you two, or even him and his brother; but it _has_ been a bit of a gripe of Metaton’s, who wants to film a few of his stand up routines for his TV channel. Sans refuses on the grounds of both not wanting his face to be well-known and also creative freedom. Metaton sort of takes over basically everything he ever gets his stupid noodle hands on with his cheesy, over-the top bullshit, so you can’t blame Sans for declining that line of possibility.

You still can’t _not_ imagine him standing on stage doing his walking whoopie-cushion routine while Metaton is in his famous gymastics rigging harness, a flapper’s dress and high-healed cowboy boots, being an absolute diva up above him. Maybe even crying at each individual fart, grieving the whoopie-cushion’s brave sacrifice.

Sans showed you the script Metaton gave him. It was full of gems like that, and also way too many references to olives, for some reason both of you couldn’t fathom.

You might be looking him over as if his terrible posture has all the answers, or maybe like you’re constipated and need a pick-me-up to get the shit flowing, because he takes it for about two seconds before creating a diversion. He takes the popcorn bag and throws his head back to pour the whole shebang in his mouth. 

“Sexy,” you say, impressed.

“hey, if anyone asks what my mouth do, now you know.”

You quirk your lips. “Is that _all_ I’m allowed to say?”

His cheeks tint just _a little_ more blue. Adorable. He’ll fuck you up in a Popeye’s bathroom as you wait for chicken strips but his cheeks heat from a mild case of innuendo. “for legal reasons I might have to issue a gag order if you say much else.”

“Oh?” you prompt, already knowing exactly where he’s headed with that but letting him take the joke home anyway. Kinda like a participation trophy.

“yeah. the ball variety.” he wiggles hie browbones.

You throw an empty Dr Pepper can at his head. He lets it hit him, as he always does, and catches it on the way down, making it disappear, giving you an infuriating grin. Either he flipped that poor can in his inventory to rot or ejected it into the Void to float indefinitely. You have no idea which is the better option.

“I feel like we’re gonna end up in small claims court one day just to deal with the amount of bullshit we’ve threatened to sue for.”

“get charged for abuse of court proceedings,” he muses, fiddling with the empty popcorn bag as he watches you watch him.

Sans _has_ gotten a little more vocal on his brother’s channel ever since the cookie videos, that’s absolutely true. (Sidenote—you are _never_ inviting Papyrus back to your kitchen again unless it’s to have him stand there and _just observe_ . You’re _still_ trying to scrub that scorch mark off your Kuerig.) He’s been on the technical end of a few of his brother’s streams and talked a little off screen during, but—well—you always got the impression from him that Sans wasn’t all that interested in being a main attraction... _online_. Or, like, on a mass scale in general. And given his steep and sudden rise in popularity, he’d be at least on par with your own climbing numbers within a week if he decided to make a Twitch or Youtube channel.

He likes standup, if it’s the kind that takes place on a shitty bar stage with less than fifty people and a tip in the form of greasy pub fries on the house. On the same level as busking on the street with a three-string guitar, Sans thrives off of what you like to call _calculated misfortune._ He chooses the frankly appalling dive bars because he feels right at home there. His comfort zone is a far cry away from the million-plus viewers his brother can easily gather with its insane, fast scrolling chat and huge online social impact.

“Do you mind if I ask why?” you hazard to ask. Then add because you can see it coming, “ _Not_ the legal validity of our supposed court cases.”

He crumples up the bag and dunks it in the trashcan beneath your desk. There’s literally no way he could make that throw from where he is without some gravity magic to aide the way, but you still rate it an eight anyway, flashing him the appropriate amount of fingers. He does a little against-the-hip fist pump with an added, drawn-out “yesss,” like a nerd.

“i just wanna.” he finally says, shrugging. But it’s the same kind if shrug someone does when they’re trying real hard not to make a big deal out of something that’s a big deal, so you don’t buy it.

Alright. You’ll bite. Time to overanalyze.

Sans is a funny guy. Both literally and figuratively, obviously. He’s got some hangups and issues just like everyone does after living life for more than a few years. He ain’t no fresh-out-the-pussy baby, as your great-aunt Zezza would say. (Yes, that’s her name. No, her mother was startlingly sober when she signed off on that. And yes, Zezza was absolutely a flower power poly pansexual hippy.)

Sans doesn’t like it when people buy him stuff. One time you bought him lunch and he got so upset you had to hand over your PayPal so he could pay you back. (He didn’t pay you back; he fucking covered the whole thing and then some. In retaliation, you hid a twenty in his sock pile. He still hasn’t found it.) You swear he’s violently allergic to gifts and kind gestures involving monetary value or something. You don’t even wanna _think_ about the fit he’s gonna throw on Gyftmas.

He has some nights where he doesn’t talk much. Those are the ones he spends mostly alone, according to Papyrus. You’d noticed him missing from the library a few times once you had him on your social radar (see: became immediate friends via his dick), but after covid happened and the school campus shut down he’s had more than a fair share of excuses to hole up in his room and lay in bed surrounded by comfort candy. (His thesis is getting written, at least.)

He doesn’t deal with confrontation very well, downplaying his side of things if his feelings were hurt just to make the other person feel better. He can get hostile if he feels threatened. And he absolutely hates it when someone is an asshole to people he admires. 

You’re about ninety-nine-percent sure he has clinical, not just school-stress related, depression. The kind that makes you wanna slap your head into some sidewalk concrete on the bad days. Not the baby _boo-hoo I’m sad sometimes_ version, either.

He dresses like he’s rolled out of a dumpster fire half awake, eats shit-tier food that makes you break out just looking at it, and has slept on your bed for a full twenty-four hours more than once. Just absolutely conked the fuck out. Then he wakes up, panics about school, throws back about six Bangs and camps out on your couch frantically groping his keyboard like a man at his wit’s end and madness’s begining.

And somehow you still want to fuck him.

Depression is a hell of a drug. And also you’re stupid horny with an interesting set of non-standards that may or may not qualify you for at least six separate clinical trials.

You cut him some serious slack with a few of those issue he’s got up in his kleenex box because you _get_ it. You’ve either been there or done that or are currently dealing with it, so why criticize him? It’s not the time or your place to do so. He gets enough of it from his bro anyway, it’d be like kicking a man while he’s already down.

Straight in the nads. With cleats.

You’ve learned a few things about him, and he’s learned a few things about you, whatever those are. (You’re kinda scared to ask at this point.) And with that knowledge comes the possible options. There’s two of them.

1) You call him on his bullshit, and he subsequently doesn’t go through with it because he’ll feel pressured (if he’s actually feeling insecure about this, which you have some doubts, but better safe than sorry). This option—assuming it backfires—does not have _getting fucked against any available surface later on in the night_ as a possiblity and ends with you watching SVU reruns on the couch alone. If he’s actually fine and just fucking with you, you risk ruining the surprise and/or joke.

Conclusion: _boring_ , and not worth the week of trying to squeeze make-up sex into both your soon-to-be very tight schedules if you get the bad ending.

( _God_ , the end of term sucks. It’s like your libido comes out from a sewer grate and prowels about in your hormones specifically because it knows you ain’t gonna get jack shit besides good ol’ Bessy the vibrator and maybe a tv-remote comparison dick pic.)

Or 2) you pretend not to notice the weird deviancy from his normal behavior in favor of just rolling with it. 

Conclusion: This has a much higher success rate in both aquiring the capture card and getting dicked down. Plus, if he’s acting shifty on purpose, you get the added hilarity of pretending to be oblivious.

It’s a no-brainer which one you’ll pick.

“Alright. Lemme save this and go get my mask.”

*

“What games are you gonna play?” you ask as you flip the blinker on and turn out of your driveway.

Sans is sitting in the passenger seat looking like a strapped-in fuzzy burrito. (One that got dropped under the couch and got lint all over it, not the moldy kind.) He’s bundled up in the blanket you got from your mom for Christmas last year. He steals it nearly every time he comes to your place.

“i got octopath for switch recently,” he says after a few moments of deliberation, “and I got the old xbox 360 fixed yesterday. i’m still trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong with the playstation.”

You incline your head in his direction without looking away from the road. “Could you compensate with magic like you did for Hopper’s speakers?”

“what, the hello kitty ones?” you nod and he sighs, slumping in his cacoon. “i already knew what was wrong with those. water damage is the one thing i can fix with my eyes closed. there was a lot of that down underground.”

You make a vague sound of acknowledgement. Whenever you try and give him sympathy for the circumstances of their old life, he shuts it down with a shrug and a ‘why are _you_ sorry? it’s not your fault.’ You just don’t bother anymore. It’s like trying to offer a hug to a cactus. It’s just not worth it.

“but this one is refusing to turn on. the wiring, circuit boards, and hard drive all look fine and test perfectly. the power supply is brand new! it should work.” he’s both frustrated and resigned. You’ve told him before, back when he got self-conscious about his tech ranting, that you don’t mind, and even enjoy, listening to him talk about it. He wasn’t used to conversating with someone who knew exactly what he was referencing, either, and sometimes he seems to remember you’re actually following along and starts to just absolutely gush information like a broken faucet with high water pressure.

Not gonna lie. It’s cute.

“Damn. I’d say bring it into a specialist but then you’d look at me all indigent like and get super offended, so I won’t.” From the corner of your eye, you see him shift to give you a look. You point blindly in his direction with the hand not mainly steering the wheel. “See! Like that.”

He huffs. It’s less biting when it’s so fond. You can practically feel him rolling his eyes. “i wanna figure it out _myself_.”

Yeah. You can’t help the small smile at that. His determination to figure out how shit works is more than endearing to you.

“as for the games, i got some more ideas. not sure if i’m even gonna go through with it, really. the streaming, i mean. we’ll see.”

By the coy sort of way he says that, all sly, you’re tuned into the fact that Sans is _absolutely_ trying to bait you into asking _why_ , like you specifically decided not to do but were suspicious of about twenty minutes ago.

You don’t bite. He doesn’t _want_ you too, anyway. Not really. (Well. Not for this. Other things, though...)

Mostly because you both think it’s nearly always worth it when he gets to the bit he’s got in mind if you _do_ play along. (Papyrus hates this fact about you two and gripes about it nearly every week. You don’t have any siblings, technically, but Pap is starting to feel more and more like a whiny little brother who you love to death but kind of want to prank nearly every day just to get on his nerves.)

“Alright.” you say, and you see him look quickly away. He’s smiling for sure. He knows you’re in on it. Good. Now to make him squirm in retaliation. “I’ll buy you Minecraft for Switch. It’s in a resurgence online lately. Unless you’d like the PC version? It’s visual mods can get pretty insane, and you have the rig for it.”

He shrinks back into the blanket. “you don’t gotta.” Typical.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot about your allergy,” you say, in a tone that means _I hear you but i’m not actually going to listen._ “Nerd.”

He makes sure you see _both_ his middle fingers before pulling up the blanket around him and fully becoming one with the fabric.

“You fuckin’ pupating in there or some shit?” you ask, reaching over to grab his head lightly through the soft material, shaking him. He flops around in there like a ragdoll, held up only by the seatbelt.

“i’m soup’n it up in here, babe. just wait, imma be such a sexy butterfly.” his voice is slightly muffled, and he’s fighting laughter, so it’s a little hard to hear him.

You don’t have to hide your smile at the endearment since he can’t see, so you direct a shit-eating grin out at the road. What a goober.

Whatare you thinking, _you’re_ the goober, getting all warm and fuzzy over some nickname like a tween in a terrible coming-of-age rom-com. He does that to you. You’re best friends, but it’s not cut-and-dry. You’ve got options. You’ve got time.

Just like before, it’s a game of chicken. And you ain’t gonna lose.

“Whatever, Heimlich,” you say, patting his head and returning your hand to the wheel. He makes an offended noise at the back of his throat. You eye the GPS. “It’s gonna be about forty minutes until we get there, so you better have your wings developed by then, unless you brought a bucket.”


End file.
